Structure and hierarchy of social attitudes. Structure, types and functions of social attitudes

Social setting– a state of psychological readiness of an individual to behave in a certain way, based on the past social experience and regulating the social behavior of the individual. (Allport). In Western social psychology, the term “attitude” is used to denote social attitudes.

Social setting has 3 components:

1. Cognitive, involving rational activity;
2. Affective (emotional assessment of an object, manifestation of feelings of sympathy or antipathy);
3. Conative (behavioral) involves consistent behavior towards an object.

1. Instrumental (adaptive, utilitarian) function: expresses adaptive tendencies of human behavior, helps to increase rewards and reduce losses. Attitude directs the subject to those objects that serve to achieve his goals. In addition, social attitude helps a person evaluate how other people feel about a social object. Supporting certain social attitudes enables a person to gain approval and be accepted by others, since they are more likely to be attracted to someone who has attitudes similar to their own. Thus, an attitude can contribute to a person’s identification with a group (allows him to interact with people, accepting their attitudes) or leads him to oppose himself to the group (in case of disagreement with the social attitudes of other group members).
2. Ego-protective function: a social attitude helps resolve internal conflicts of the individual, protects people from unpleasant information about themselves or about social objects that are significant to them. People often act and think in ways to protect themselves from unpleasant information. For example, in order to increase his own importance or the importance of his group, a person often resorts to forming a negative attitude towards members of the outgroup.
3. Function of expressing values ​​(function of self-realization): attitudes give a person the opportunity to express what is important to him and organize his behavior accordingly. Carrying out certain actions in accordance with his attitudes, the individual realizes himself in relation to social facilities. This function helps a person to define himself and understand what he is.
4. Function of organizing knowledge: based on a person’s desire for semantic ordering of the world around him. With the help of attitude, it is possible to evaluate information coming from the outside world and correlate it with a person’s existing motives, goals, values ​​and interests. Installation simplifies the learning task new information. By performing this function, attitude is included in the process of social cognition.

Types of social attitudes:

1. Social attitude toward an object is the individual’s willingness to behave in a specific way. 2. Situational attitude - the willingness to behave in a certain way in relation to the same object differently in different situations. 3. Perceptual attitude - readiness to see what a person wants to see.4. Partial or particular attitudes and general or generalized attitudes. An attitude toward an object is always a particular attitude; a perceptual attitude becomes general when large number objects become objects of social attitudes. The process from particular to general proceeds as it increases. Types of attitudes according to their modality: 1. positive or positive,
2. negative or negative,
3. neutral,
4. ambivalent social attitudes (ready to behave both positively and negatively) – marital relationships, managerial relationships.

Stereotype- an established attitude towards current events, developed on the basis of comparing them with internal ideals. A system of stereotypes constitutes a worldview.

The concept of “stereotype” entered Western socio-political discourse at the suggestion of Walter Lippmann, which he used in describing his original concept of public opinion in 1922.

According to Lippman, it is possible to derive the following definition: a stereotype is a pattern of perception, filtering, and interpretation of information accepted in a historical community when recognizing and recognizing the surrounding world, based on previous social experience. The system of stereotypes represents social reality. Dynamics of stereotypes: A stereotype begins to operate even before the mind turns on. This leaves a specific imprint on the data that is perceived by our senses even before this data reaches the mind. Nothing resists education or criticism more than a stereotype, since it leaves its mark on the facts at the moment of their perception.

To a certain extent, external stimuli, especially spoken or printed ones, activate some part of the stereotype system, so that the immediate impression and the previously formed opinion appear in the mind simultaneously.

In cases where experience comes into conflict with a stereotype, a twofold outcome is possible: if the individual has already lost a certain flexibility or, due to some significant interest, it is extremely inconvenient for him to change his stereotypes, he can ignore this contradiction and consider it an exception that confirms the rule, or find some error, and then forget about this event. But if he has not lost curiosity or the ability to think, then the innovation is integrated into the already existing picture of the world and changes it.

Socialization- personality formation is the process of an individual’s assimilation of patterns of behavior, psychological attitudes, social norms and values, knowledge, and skills that allow him to function successfully in society. Human socialization begins at birth and continues throughout life. In its process, he assimilates the social experience accumulated by humanity in various spheres of life, which allows him to perform certain, vitally important social roles. Socialization is considered as a process, condition, manifestation and result social formation personality. How does the process mean social formation and personality development depending on the nature of human interaction with the environment, adaptation to it, taking into account individual characteristics. As a condition, it indicates the presence of the society that a person needs for natural social development as individuals. As a manifestation, it is a person’s social reaction, taking into account his age and social development in the system of specific social relations. It is used to judge the level of social development. As a result, it is a fundamental characteristic of a person and his characteristics as a social unit of society in accordance with his age.

In sociology, there are two levels of socialization: the level of primary socialization and the level of secondary socialization. Primary socialization occurs in the sphere of interpersonal relationships in small groups. The primary agents of socialization are the individual’s immediate environment: parents, close and distant relatives, family friends, peers, teachers, doctors, etc. Secondary socialization occurs at the level of large social groups and institutions. Secondary agents are formal organizations, official institutions: representatives of the administration and school, army, state, etc. Mechanisms of socialization: Socialization of a person in interaction with various factors and agents occurs through a number of, so to speak, “mechanisms.” Agents + factors = mechanisms of socialization. Divided into:

1. Socio-psychological mechanisms
2. Social and pedagogical mechanisms

TO socio-psychological mechanisms The following can be included: Imprinting (capturing) - a person’s fixation at the receptor and subconscious levels of the features of vital objects affecting him.

Imprinting occurs mainly in infancy. However, even at later age stages it is possible to capture some images, sensations, etc.

Existential pressure- language acquisition and unconscious acquisition of norms social behavior, mandatory in the process of interaction with significant persons.

Imitation- following an example or model. In this case, it is one of the ways of a person’s voluntary and, most often, involuntary assimilation of social experience. Reflection is an internal dialogue in which a person considers, evaluates, accepts or rejects certain values ​​inherent in various institutions of society, family, peer society, significant persons, etc.

Reflection can represent an internal dialogue of several types: between different human selves, with real or fictitious persons, etc. With the help of reflection, a person can be formed and changed as a result of his awareness and experience of the reality in which he lives, his place in this reality and himself himself.

TO social and pedagogical mechanisms Socialization includes the following:

Traditional mechanism socialization (spontaneous) is the assimilation by a person of norms, standards of behavior, views, stereotypes that are characteristic of his family and immediate environment (neighbors, friends, etc.). This assimilation occurs, as a rule, at an unconscious level with the help of imprinting, uncritical perception of prevailing stereotypes. The effectiveness of the traditional mechanism is very clearly manifested when a person knows “how to”, “what is necessary”, but this knowledge of his contradicts the traditions of his immediate environment. In this case, the French thinker of the 16th century turns out to be right. Michel Montaigne, who wrote: “...We can repeat our own as much as we like, but custom and generally accepted everyday rules drag us along with them.” In addition, the effectiveness of the traditional mechanism is manifested in the fact that certain elements of social experience, learned, for example, in childhood, but subsequently unclaimed or blocked due to changed living conditions (for example, moving from a village to a big city), can “pop up” in human behavior during the next change in life conditions or at subsequent age stages.

Institutional mechanism socialization, as the name itself implies, functions in the process of human interaction with the institutions of society and various organizations, both specially created for his socialization, and those implementing socializing functions along the way, in parallel with their main functions (industrial, social, club and other structures, as well as mass media). In the process of a person’s interaction with various institutions and organizations, there is an increasing accumulation of relevant knowledge and experience of socially approved behavior, as well as experience of imitation of socially approved behavior and conflict or conflict-free avoidance of fulfilling social norms. It must be borne in mind that the media as a social institution (print, radio, cinema, television) influence the socialization of a person not only through the broadcast of certain information, but also through the presentation of certain patterns of behavior of characters in books, films, and television programs. The effectiveness of this influence is determined by the fact that, as subtly noted back in the 18th century. reformer of Western European ballet, French choreographer Jean Georges Nover, “since the passions experienced by the heroes are distinguished by greater strength and certainty than the passions of ordinary people, it is easier to imitate them.” People, in accordance with their age and individual characteristics, tend to identify themselves with certain heroes, while perceiving their characteristic patterns of behavior, lifestyle, etc.

Stylized mechanism socialization operates within a certain subculture. Subculture in general terms is understood as a complex of moral and psychological traits and behavioral manifestations typical of people of a certain age or a certain professional or cultural layer, which as a whole creates a certain style of life and thinking of a particular age, professional or social group. But a subculture influences a person’s socialization insofar and to the extent that the groups of people that bear it (peers, colleagues, etc.) are referents (significant) for him.

Interpersonal mechanism socialization functions in the process of interaction of a person with persons who are subjectively significant to him. It is based on the psychological mechanism of interpersonal transfer due to empathy, identification, etc. Significant persons can be parents (at any age), any respected adult, peer friend of the same or opposite sex, etc. Naturally, significant persons can be members certain organizations and groups with which a person interacts, and if these are peers, then they can also be carriers of an age subculture. But there are often cases when communication with significant persons in groups and organizations can have an influence on a person that is not identical to that which the group or organization itself has on him.

Another issue in studying personality in social space is the problem of social attitudes.

The general theory of personality examines the issue of the relationship between needs and motives to clarify the mechanisms that prompt a person to act. D.N. Uznadze defines attitude as a holistic dynamic state of the subject, a state of readiness for a certain activity, a state that is determined by two factors: the need of the subject and the corresponding objective situation.

Social setting- this is a concept that to a certain extent explains the choice of motive .

In Western psychology, the term “attitude” is used to denote the concept of social attitude.

G. Allport [2] counted 17 definitions of attitude, however, despite the difference, attitude was understood by everyone as a certain state of consciousness and nervous system, readiness to react, arising on the basis of previous experience, exerting a guiding and dynamic influence on behavior.

One of the first methods for studying attitudes - the “social distance scale” - was proposed by E. Bogardus [2] in 1925. The scale was intended to determine the degree of acceptability of another person as a representative of a certain nationality: to close kinship through marriage; before joining my club personal friend; to living on my street as a neighbor; before working in my profession; to citizenship in my country. This kind of “thermometer” made it possible to measure and compare attitudes towards different nationalities.

A large, well-structured and rich in empirical research section of social psychology of personality is change in attitudes. Researchers have mainly focused on nationalist attitudes. It turned out that prejudices arise in childhood as the ability to differentiate stimuli develops. They manifest themselves in limited contact and subsequent rejection of “they” groups and their symbols. It is only much later that the justification for prejudice that has developed in a particular culture is assimilated. The discovery of the described sequence made it possible to change methods of prevention: instead of explaining younger schoolchildren the unfoundedness of nationalist prejudices, the teacher demonstrated the harmfulness of discrimination.

Attitudes are a product of influences to which a person is exposed from early childhood; they are the result of his personal experience and interactions with other people. In childhood, many attitudes develop in accordance with the parental model. They acquire their final form between 12 and 30 years. Between 20 and 30 years, installations “crystallize.” After this, settings are changed with great difficulty.

Attitudes and approved behavior in society may differ. A long-studied problem related to attitudes is the question of the relationship between behavior and attitude.

To show how people will try to maintain their beliefs and harmony in their belief system, various theories have been proposed. These theories can explain what can serve as an incentive for a change in attitude - the individual’s need to restore cognitive consistency, that is, an orderly, “unambiguous” perception of the world.

1. F. Heider's theory of cognitive correspondence (structural balance)[1 each].

A person has a tendency to look for such attitudes that could maintain harmonious relationships and “balance” between them and other people at a high level, and, conversely, to avoid such attitudes that could lead to a violation of this harmony. Harmony in a person's belief system will be higher, the more common views he shares with another person to whom he feels affection.

The model consists of elements: “P” – individual, “O” – another person, “X” – object of attitude. The cognitive system can have a balanced structure (the individual’s social attitudes are in agreement with each other) and an unbalanced one. Haider argues that people tend to prefer balanced situations. This is confirmed by empirical research. For a situation of balance, all positive, or one positive and two negative attitudes are required. However, the theory does not explain which attitude an individual would prefer to change.

2. The theory of cognitive dissonance by L. Festinger[1 each].

If there is a discrepancy between what a person knows and what he does, then the person will try to explain this contradiction and present it as consistent in order to achieve internal consistency.

The main position of the theory indicates that the existence of dissonance in the cognitive system is experienced as discomfort and prompts the individual to the following actions:

1) or make such changes that would weaken the dissonance;

2) or avoid situations and information that could lead to increased dissonance.

These two tendencies are a direct function of the amount of dissonance in the system: the greater the dissonance, the greater the need for change. Dissonance depends on the importance of the cognitions and the number of elements included in the dissonant relationship.

There are the following methods for mitigating (weakening) emerging dissonances:

· change one or more cognitive elements;

· add new components in favor of one of the parties;

· give elements less importance;

· look for information that can soften dissonance, that is, create consonance;

· distort or reorient existing information.

Researchers have identified interesting fact: actions inconsistent with the attitude can lead to a change in attitude. This occurs under the condition that a person does not have an external justification for his behavior and, in this case, he is forced to turn to internal justification.

Dissonance depends entirely on the individual's cognitive system; it is a subjective variable. The greatest influence is exerted by cognitive dissonance affecting the self-concept.

3. Dispositional concept of V.A. Yadova[2 each].

Personality dispositions– these are predispositions to perceive and evaluate the activities of others and one’s own activities in a certain way. As well as the predilection to act in certain conditions in a certain way.

Dispositions arise when “meeting” a certain level of needs and certain level of situations their satisfaction. At different levels of needs and different levels of situations, different dispositional formations operate (Fig. 5).

The theory identifies the following four levels in the hierarchy of needs:

1. the sphere where human needs are realized – the immediate family environment;

2. a sphere connected by a contact (small) group in which the individual operates;

3. field of activity related to a certain area of ​​work, leisure, or everyday life;

4. sphere of activity, understood as a certain social-class structure, into which the individual is included through the development of ideological and cultural values ​​of society.

Situations in theory are structured according to the duration of existence of these activity conditions and include the following levels:

1. rapidly changing subject situations;

2. situations of group communication, characteristic of human activity within a small group. They are much longer than the previous ones;

3. stable conditions of activity that take place in various social spheres (family, work, leisure);

4. stable conditions for activity within a certain type of society.

Certain disposition arises and operates at the intersection of a certain level of needs and situations of their satisfaction.

In this case, four levels of dispositions are distinguished.

1. Installation(fixed settings according to Uznadze). Attitudes are formed on the basis of vital needs and in the simplest situations. These attitudes are devoid of modality (for or against) and are not realized by the subject.

2. Social fixed attitudes(attitudes). These are more complex dispositions that are formed on the basis of a person’s needs for communication carried out in a small contact group. These attitudes are formed on the basis of an assessment of individual social objects (or their properties) and individual social situations (their properties).

3. Basic social attitudes(the general orientation of an individual’s interests in relation to a specific sphere of social activity). These settings relate more to some significant social areas. For example, you can find a dominant focus in the field of professional activity (career and professional growth).

4. System of personal value orientations . This system influences the goals of human life, as well as the means of achieving them. This system is formed on the basis of the highest social needs of the individual and is determined by general social conditions, the type of society, the system of its economic, cultural, and ideological principles.

The main function of the dispositional system is the mental regulation of social activity or human behavior in the social environment.

Rice. 5. Hierarchical scheme of dispositional regulation of social behavior of an individual (V.A. Yadov)

Thus, the theory identifies several hierarchical levels of behavior:

1st level of behavior - regulates “behavioral acts” - the individual’s immediate reactions to an active objective situation at a given point in time;

2nd level of behavior – regulates the actions of the individual, this is an elementary socially significant unit of behavior;

3rd level of behavior – regulates systems of actions that form behavior in various spheres of life, where a person pursues significantly more distant goals, the achievement of which is ensured by a system of actions;

4th level of behavior – regulates the integrity of behavior; this is a kind of life “plan”, individual life goals associated with the main social spheres of human activity.

In each specific situation, depending on the goal, the leading role belongs to a certain dispositional formation, while the remaining dispositions represent “background levels.”

The undoubted advantage of the concept is that behavior and activity are carried out by the individual not only in the immediate objective situation, but also in the conditions of a wide system of social connections and relationships. Moreover, the situation itself in which the action takes place is considered as internal generatrix disposition and as a stimulus for its actualization.

A concept that to a certain extent explains a person’s choice of motive, and then specific option actions, there is a concept social attitude(Obukhovsky, 1972). It is widely used in everyday practice when making predictions about a person’s behavior: “N., obviously, will not go to this concert, because he has a prejudice against pop music”; “I’m unlikely to like K.: I don’t like mathematicians at all,” etc. At this everyday level, the concept of social attitude is used in a meaning close to the concept of “attitude.” However, in psychology, the term “attitude” has its own meaning, its own tradition of research, and it is necessary to relate the concept of “social attitude” to this tradition.

The tradition of studying social attitudes has developed in Western sociology and social psychology. In English, a social attitude corresponds to the concept of “attitude” (attitude), which was introduced into scientific use in 1918–1920. W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki. They gave the first (one of the most successful) definition attitude, which they understood as a state of consciousness that regulates a person’s attitude and behavior in connection with a certain object in certain conditions, and his psychological experience of the social value, the meaning of the object. Here the most important signs of attitude, or social installation, are brought to the fore, namely - social character objects with which a person’s attitude and behavior are connected, the awareness of these relations and behavior, their emotional component, as well as the regulatory role of social attitudes. Social objects are understood in this case in the broadest sense: they can be institutions of society and the state, phenomena, events, processes, norms, individuals, etc.

The named characteristics predetermined the later developed structure of a social attitude, and also made it possible to explain its fundamental difference from a simple attitude (according to the theory of D.N. Uznadze), which is devoid of sociality, awareness and emotionality and reflects, first of all, the psychophysiological readiness of the individual for certain actions. Let us recall that according to D.N. Uznadze, " installation is a holistic dynamic state of the subject, a state of readiness for a certain activity, a state that is determined by two factors: the need of the subject and the corresponding objective situation” (Uznadze, 1901). The attitude towards behavior to satisfy a given need and in a given situation can be reinforced if the situation is repeated, then a fixed installation as opposed to situational. The proposed understanding of the attitude is not related to the analysis social factors that determine the behavior of an individual, with the individual’s assimilation of social experience, with a complex hierarchy of determinants that determine the very nature of the social situation in which the individual acts. Installation in the context of the concept of D.N. Uznadze is most concerned with the issue of implementation protozoa physiological needs of a person. It is interpreted as the unconscious, which excludes the application of this concept to the study of the most complex, higher forms human activity.

To understand the essence of attitudes, one should also pay attention to the logical premises from which Thomas and Znaniecki proceeded. In their opinion, the study of the relationship between the individual and society should be based on an analysis of the social values ​​of society itself and the attitude of individuals towards them. Only from these positions can their social behavior be explained.

After the discovery of the attitude phenomenon, a kind of “boom” began in its research. Several different interpretations of attitude have emerged, and many contradictory definitions have emerged. Characterizing the essence of this phenomenon, various authors in their studies focused on different components of the psychological structure under discussion. For some it is a state of readiness, for others it is stability of response to social objects, for others it is motivational functions, etc.

In 1935, G. Allport wrote a review article on the problem of attitude research, in which he counted 17 definitions of this concept. From these seventeen definitions, those features of attitude that were noted by all researchers were identified. In their final, systematized form, they looked like this. Attitude was understood by everyone as:

a) a certain state of consciousness and nervous system;

b) expressing readiness to react;

c) organized;

d) based on previous experience;

e) exerting a guiding and dynamic influence on behavior.

Thus, the dependence of attitude on previous experience and its important regulatory role in behavior were established.

IN domestic psychology a number of concepts and concepts have also emerged that are close to the idea of ​​a social attitude, although they arose outside the framework of this problem. These include the category of relationships in the concept of V.N. Myasishchev, which he understood as a system of connections between the individual and reality; A.N.’s concept of personal meaning Leontiev, who highlighted, first of all, personal character a person’s perception of objects in the real world and his relationship to them; personality orientation in the works of L.I. Bozovic. All these concepts reflect, to one degree or another, individual properties of a social attitude.

Simultaneously with the clarification of the essence of attitudes in foreign psychology, attempts were made to create adequate methods for their study. Various scales first proposed by L. Thurstone were used as the main method. The use of scales was necessary and possible because attitudes represent a latent (hidden) attitude towards social situations and objects and are characterized by modality (therefore they can be judged by a set of statements). It quickly became clear that the development of scales was constrained by the unsolved nature of some substantive problems of attitudes, in particular regarding their structure; It remained unclear what the scale measures? In addition, since all measurements were based on verbal self-report, ambiguities arose with the distinction between the concepts of “attitude” - “opinion”, “knowledge”, “belief”, etc. The development of methodological tools stimulated further theoretical research. It was carried out in two main directions: disclosure functions attitude and its analysis structures.

It was clear that the attitude served to satisfy some important needs of the subject, but it was necessary to establish which ones. Were allocated four attitude functions:

1) adaptive(sometimes called utilitarian, adaptive) - the attitude directs the subject to those objects that serve to achieve his goals;

2) function knowledge - attitude gives simplified instructions regarding the method of behavior in relation to a specific object;

3) function expressions(sometimes called the function of value, self-regulation) - attitude acts as a means of freeing the subject from internal tension, expressing oneself as an individual;

4) function protection- attitude contributes to the resolution of internal conflicts of the individual.

The attitude is able to perform all these functions because it has complex structure. In 1942, M. Smith defined a three-component structure of attitude, which distinguishes:

A) cognitive component (awareness of the object of social installation);

b) affective component (emotional assessment of the object, identifying feelings of sympathy or antipathy towards it);

V) behavioral(conative) component (consistent behavior towards an object).

Now the social attitude was defined as awareness, assessment, readiness to act. The three components have also been identified in numerous experimental studies (“Yale Studies” by K. Hovland). Although they produced interesting results, many problems remained unresolved. First of all, it remained unclear what the scales measured: attitude as a whole or one of its components (it seemed that most scales were able to “capture” only the emotional assessment of an object, i.e., the affective component of attitude). Further, in experiments conducted in the laboratory, the research was carried out according to the simplest scheme - an attitude towards one object was revealed, and it was not clear what would happen if this attitude was woven into the broader social structure of the individual’s actions. Finally, another difficulty arose regarding the connection (or rather, the discrepancy) between the attitude and real behavior. This difficulty was discovered after the famous experiment of R. Lapierre was carried out in 1934.

During the experiment, it turned out that over two hundred managers and hotel owners who unquestioningly accepted and served Lapierre and his two companions, of Chinese nationality, during their trip to the United States (real behavior), six months later refused Lapierre’s written request to accept them again ( verbal expression of attitude towards the Chinese). LaPierre's Paradox sparked a long debate and called into question the usefulness of social attitude theory. In fact, the contradiction took place not between attitudes and behavior, but between the social attitudes of managers, which was reflected in their actions. On the one hand, they experienced prejudices towards the Chinese and did not want to accept them, and on the other, their social attitudes towards public opinion and their own reputation came into play. If they had refused the Chinese who had already appeared at the hotel, this could have had some negative consequences for their reputation, and refusal under any pretext in a written response did not oblige them to anything.

The nature of the interdependence of personality attitudes during the perception of social objects was revealed in a number of experiments to study the perceptual attitude. Perceptual setting means a predisposition to a certain interpretation of the perceived elements of reality. A striking illustration is the experiment of S. Ash, conducted in 1952. Two groups of subjects were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the following statement: “I believe that a little rebellion from time to time is a useful thing and is necessary in life.” political world, like a thunderstorm in the physical world." But at the same time, the author of the statement in the first group was named T. Jefferson, one of the first presidents of the United States, and in the second - V.I. Lenin. The majority of subjects in the first group agreed with the statement, understanding the “little rebellion” literally, as not carrying with it much danger. The majority in the second group disagreed with the statement, associating a “small rebellion” with a bloody revolution. Thus, the social attitudes of the subjects towards Jefferson and Lenin (and related events) predetermined the different nature of their perceptual attitudes when perceiving the same statement.

In connection with the contradictions within the system of social attitudes (and their individual components), researchers have made attempts to find ways to overcome the emerging difficulties. Some additional concepts have emerged that reflect not the different nature of the attitudes themselves, but only the reasons for possible contradictions between them. For example, M. Rokeach expressed the idea that a person has two attitudes simultaneously: on object and on situation. One or the other attitude can “switch on.” Thus, in Lapierre’s experiment, the attitudes of the same hotel managers towards the Chinese can be called an object-oriented attitude, and the considerations that guided them when accepting the Chinese can be called a situational attitude. The attitude towards the object was negative (attitude towards the Chinese), but the attitude towards the situation prevailed - the hotel owner in a specific situation acted in accordance with accepted service standards.

In the proposal of D. Katz and E. Stotland, the idea of ​​different manifestations of some different aspects of attitude took on a different form: they suggested that in different situations either the cognitive or the affective components of the attitude may manifest themselves, and therefore the result will be different. Many more different explanations of the results of Lapierre’s experiment arose, in particular, those proposed by M. Fishbein (both attitude and behavior each consist of four elements, and it is not attitude in general that should be correlated with behavior, but each element of attitude with each element of behavior. Perhaps then no discrepancy will be observed).

Hierarchical structure of the system of social attitudes. From the point of view of significance for society and the individual, individual social attitudes occupy an “unequal” position in the system and form a kind of hierarchy. This fact is reflected in the well-known dispositional concept of regulation of social behavior of the individual V.A. Yadova(1975). This concept, to a certain extent, restores the idea of ​​the integrity of a social attitude (as opposed to attempts to explore its individual components), and represents an attempt to understand this integrity in a social context.

The main idea behind the concept is that a person has complex system various dispositional formations that regulate his behavior and activities. These dispositions are organized hierarchically, i.e. lower and higher levels can be designated. Determination of the levels of dispositional regulation of an individual’s social behavior is carried out on the basis of D.N.’s scheme. Uznadze, according to which an attitude always arises in the presence of a certain need, on the one hand, and a situation of satisfying this need, on the other. However, designated by D.N. Uznadze’s attitudes arose from the “meeting” of only elementary human needs and fairly simple situations of satisfying them.

V.A. Yadov suggested that at other levels of needs and in more complex, including social, situations, other dispositional formations operate, moreover, they arise whenever a certain level of needs “meets” a certain level of situations for their satisfaction (Fig. 1).

Rice. 1. Hierarchical scheme of dispositional regulation of social behavior of an individual (V.A. Yadov)

The concept identifies four levels of dispositions - formations that regulate the behavior and activities of an individual. The first level includes simply attitudes (in the understanding of D.N. Uznadze) that regulate behavior at the simplest, mainly everyday level; to the second - social attitudes, which, according to V.A. Yadov, come into effect at the level of small groups; the third level includes the general orientation of the individual’s interests (or basic social attitudes), reflecting the individual’s attitude to his main areas of life (profession, social activities, hobbies, etc.); At the fourth (highest) level there is a system of value orientations2 of the individual.

The value of V.A.’s concept Yadov is that she quite reasonably and logically builds a hierarchy of social attitudes according to the criterion of the social significance of their objects. But it is no less logical to recognize that for each individual there is his own, subjective hierarchy of social attitudes according to the criterion of their psychological significance only for him, which does not always coincide with the socially recognized hierarchy. It is not difficult to imagine that for some people the meaning of life and the highest value is creating a family and raising children (especially for women); and for another, in the foreground is building a career at any cost, which constitutes for him the main value orientation in life. According to the concept of V.A. Yadov, such dispositions rightly belong to the second and third levels, and according to subjective personal criteria they turn out to be the highest in their significance for the individual.

In addition to the dispositional concept of V.A. Yadov, the criterion of which is the social significance of objects of social attitudes at various levels, we can recognize the existence of subjective hierarchies of social attitudes, built according to the criterion of their psychological and personal significance for each specific individual.

Social attitudes and mechanisms of the perceptual process. The structure of a social attitude allows us to distinguish among others its two important varieties - stereotype and prejudice. They differ from ordinary social attitudes primarily in the content of their cognitive component.

Stereotype- this is a social attitude with a frozen, often impoverished content of the cognitive component. When we talk about stereotypical thinking, we mean the limitation, narrowness or outdatedness of a person’s ideas about certain objects of reality or about ways of interacting with them. Stereotypes are useful and necessary as a form of economy of thinking and action in relation to fairly simple and stable objects and situations, adequate interaction with which is possible on the basis of familiar and experience-confirmed ideas. Where an object requires creative understanding or has changed, but ideas about it remain the same, the stereotype becomes a brake in the processes of interaction between the individual and reality.

Prejudice- this is a social attitude with a distorted content of its cognitive component, as a result of which the individual perceives some social objects in an inadequate, distorted form. Often a strong component is associated with such a cognitive component, i.e. emotionally rich, affective component. As a result, prejudice causes not only an uncritical perception of individual elements of reality, but also inadequate actions in relation to them under certain conditions. The most common type of such perverted social attitudes are racial and national prejudices.

The main reason for the formation of prejudices lies in the underdevelopment of the cognitive sphere of the individual, due to which the individual uncritically perceives the influence of the relevant environment. Therefore, most often prejudices arise in childhood, when the child still has no or almost no adequate knowledge about a particular social object, but under the influence of parents and immediate environment a certain emotional and evaluative attitude towards it is already formed. The corresponding life experience of an individual, emotionally experienced but not sufficiently critically interpreted, can also influence the formation or consolidation of a prejudice. For example, some Russians faced with criminal groups, organized along national lines, transfer a negative attitude to the entire people whose representatives this or that group consists of.

The following can also be considered as examples of the manifestation of social attitudes in various situations of interpersonal interaction: mechanisms of the perceptual process, as a mechanism of perceptual defense, the effect of “expectations”, the phenomenon of cognitive complexity.

Perceptual defense mechanism is a way to protect a person from traumatic experiences, to protect from the perception of a threatening stimulus. In social psychology, perceptual defense can be considered as an attempt to ignore certain features of another person (group) when perceiving and thereby build a barrier to its influence. The mechanism of perceptual defense can be a phenomenon discovered by M. Lerner - the so-called belief in a just world. This phenomenon is that a person tends to believe that there is a correspondence between what he does and what rewards or punishments follow. Meeting with reverse example includes a perceptual defense mechanism.

The "expectations" effect is implemented in “implicit theories of personality”, i.e. everyday ideas of a person regarding the connections between certain personality qualities, and sometimes regarding the motives of behavior of other people. This arbitrary linking of features is called “illusory correlations.”

The phenomenon of cognitive complexity. Implicit theories of personality are unique constructs or “frameworks” by which the perceived person is assessed. In a broader context, the idea of ​​the construct was developed in the theory of personal constructs by J. Kelly. Under construct here we understand the way of seeing the world, characteristic of each person, and interpreting its elements as similar or different from each other. It is assumed that people differ among themselves according to such characteristics as the number of constructs included in the system, their nature, and the type of connection between them. The combination of these features constitutes a certain degree human cognitive complexity. It has been experimentally proven that there is a relationship between cognitive complexity and a person’s ability to analyze the world around him: more cognitively difficult people more easily integrate perceptual data, even in the presence of contradictory properties of the object, i.e. make fewer errors than people with less cognitive complexity (“cognitively simple”) when solving the same problem.

Changing social attitudes. If we take attitudes to be a relatively low (compared to value orientations, for example) level of dispositions, then it becomes clear that the problem of changing them is especially relevant. Even if social psychology learns to recognize in which case a person will demonstrate a discrepancy between attitude and real behavior, and in which - not, the forecast of this real behavior will also depend on whether the attitude towards one or another changes or not during the period of time of interest to us. object. If the attitude changes, behavior cannot be predicted until the direction in which the attitude change will occur is known. The study of factors that determine changes in social attitudes turns into a fundamentally important task for social psychology (Magun, 1983).

Many different models have been put forward to explain the process of changing social attitudes. These explanatory models are constructed in accordance with the principles that are applied in a particular study. Since most studies of attitudes are carried out in line with two main theoretical orientations2 - behaviorist And cognitivist, Therefore, explanations based on the principles of these two directions are most widespread.

IN behaviorist oriented social psychology (the study of social attitudes by K. Hovland) uses the learning principle as an explanatory principle for understanding the fact of changes in attitudes: a person’s attitudes change depending on how the reinforcement of a particular social attitude is organized. By changing the system of rewards and punishments, you can influence the nature of the social setting and change it.

However, if the attitude is formed on the basis of previous life experience, social in content, then change is also possible only if social factors are “included”. Reinforcement in the behaviorist tradition is not associated with these types of factors. The subordination of the social attitude itself to higher levels of dispositions once again justifies the need to turn to the whole system social factors, and not just to direct “reinforcement”.

IN cognitivist tradition, the explanation for changes in social attitudes is given in terms of the so-called correspondence theories: F. Heider, T. Newcomb, L. Festinger, C. Osgood, P. Tannenbaum. This means that a change in attitude occurs whenever a discrepancy arises in the individual’s cognitive structure, for example, a negative attitude towards an object and a positive attitude towards a person who gives this object a positive characteristic collide. Inconsistencies can arise for various other reasons. It is important that the stimulus for changing attitude is the individual’s need to restore cognitive compliance, i.e. orderly, “unambiguous” perception of the external world. When such an explanatory model is adopted, all social determinants of changes in social attitudes are eliminated, so key questions again remain unresolved.

In order to find an adequate approach to the problem of changing social attitudes, it is necessary to very clearly imagine the specific socio-psychological content of this concept, which lies in the fact that this phenomenon is due to “both the fact of its functioning in the social system and the property of regulation of human behavior as a being capable of active, conscious, transformative production activity, included in a complex interweaving of connections with other people” (Shikhirev, 1976). Therefore, in contrast to the sociological description of changes in social attitudes, it is not enough to identify only the totality of social changes that precede and explain the change in attitudes. At the same time, in contrast to the general psychological approach, it is also not enough to analyze only the changed conditions of the “meeting” of a need with the situation of its satisfaction.

Changes in social attitudes must be analyzed both from the point of view content of objective social changes, affecting this level of dispositions, and in terms of changes active position personalities, caused not simply “in response” to a situation, but due to circumstances generated by the development of the personality itself. The stated requirements of the analysis can be fulfilled under one condition: when considering the installation in the context of the activity. If a social attitude arises in a certain area of ​​human activity, then its change can be understood by analyzing changes in the activity itself. Among them, in this case, the most important is the change in the relationship between the motive and the purpose of the activity, because only in this case does the personal meaning of the activity change for the subject, and therefore the social attitude (Asmolov, 1979). This approach allows us to build a forecast of changes in social attitudes in accordance with the change in the ratio of the motive and purpose of the activity, the nature of the goal-setting process.

Formation social attitudes Personality answers the question: how is the acquired social experience refracted by the Personality and specifically manifests itself in its actions and actions?

The concept that to a certain extent explains the choice of motive is the concept social attitude.

There is a concept of installation and attitude - a social attitude.

The attitude is considered generally psychologically - the readiness of consciousness for a certain reaction, an unconscious phenomenon (Uznadze).

In it, disposition is considered as a complex of inclinations, readiness for full perception of the conditions of activity and for certain behavior in these conditions. In this understanding, it is very close to the concept of attitude.

The named dispositional concept evaluates personality dispositions as a hierarchically organized system with several levels:

The first (lowest) - form elementary fixed attitudes, without modality (experience “for” or “against”) and cognitive components;

The second consists of social fixed installations, or attitudes;

The third is based on basic social attitudes or the general orientation of an individual’s interests towards a specific area of ​​social activity;

The fourth (highest) - affects the system of orientations towards the goals of life and the means of achieving these goals.

The above hierarchical system is the result of all previous experience and influence social conditions. In it, at the highest levels, general self-regulation of behavior is carried out, the lower ones are relatively independent, they ensure the adaptation of the individual to specific changing conditions.

Mostly, the concept considered is an attempt to find the relationship between dispositions, needs and situations, which also form hierarchical systems. The above-mentioned researchers (P. Shikhirev and others) draw attention to the fact that there is no big difference between the dispositions of V. Yadov and the position of the individual that they offer.

This is explained by the fact that the position is a system of views, attitudes, ideas, value orientations regarding the conditions of one’s own life, which are realized in the behavior of the individual. What is also interesting here is that a position is one’s own, subjective attitude associated with assessing the surrounding reality and choosing optimal behavior.

In general, most authors consider a social attitude as a stable, fixed, rigid formation of a person, which ensures the stability of the direction of his activities, behavior, ideas about the world and himself.

There are a number of theories where attitudes themselves form the structure of personality, and in others, social attitudes occupy only a certain place among the qualitative levels of the personal hierarchy.

The general socio-psychological prerequisites for individual behavior in the structure of interpersonal and group relationships include:

Participants in the interaction: subject A (an individual or a group of people), endowed with a certain organization and activity in building an expedient system of communicative actions; Subject B is another participant in the interaction (individual or collective) towards whom the behavior is directed;

Readiness for action;

Communicative action, deed;

A specific communicative program (line, stereotype) of behavior and a mechanism for assessing the effectiveness of its implementation.

The uniqueness of a person’s behavior depends on the nature of his relationship with another interlocutor or the group of which he is a member. Behavior is also influenced by group norms and values, status and role prescriptions.

Understanding a specific personality as a socio-psychological phenomenon requires considering the individual’s behavior as social in content and psychological in form, i.e. it represents communication and interaction of two subjects (collective or individual), based on certain norms, interests, attitudes, values, personal meanings and motives.

Depending on the situation, different types of behavior are distinguished:

Verbal (manifests in language);

Significant (reaction to a sign);

Role-based (meets the requirements that are imposed on an individual by a certain role);

Deviation behavior (contradicts legal, moral, social and other norms accepted in society).

An individual’s overestimation of his communicative capabilities, weakening of criticality in monitoring the implementation of a communicative program of behavior, that is, inappropriate behavior negatively affects interpersonal and group relationships, which can cause aggression, depression, conflict, etc.

An act, that is, communication mediated by the process of communication and interaction between people, is a component constant (basic unit) of social behavior. In reference literature, an act is characterized as an act of moral self-determination of an individual, in which he asserts himself as an individual in his relationship to other people and groups of society.

In action, a person, by changing himself, changes the situation and, thus, influences the social environment. Consequently, it can be argued that the act becomes the leading mechanism and driving force for the development and self-development of the individual in society.

V. Romenets interprets an act as the most vivid way of expressing human activity, which, on the one hand, absorbs into its content the features of the historical level of human culture, on the other hand, it itself determines this culture, being a manifestation of the subject of historical activity.

The scientist defines an action as a cell of any form of human activity, and not only moral. An act expresses any relationship between a person and the material world; it is a way of personal existence in the world.

According to V. Romenz, everything that exists in a person and in the human world is an action process and its result. The act forms the essential strength of the individual, his activity and creativity in interaction with the world.

He reveals the secret of this world in the form of practical, scientific, socio-political and other development. In this understanding, as the researcher believes, an act should be considered as a universal philosophical principle that helps to interpret the nature of man and the world in their cognitive and practical aspects.

In its leading certainty, an act is a communicative act, carried out between a person and the material world. It is behavioral communication that presupposes the personal separation of a person from the world. According to the scientist, such communication can be understood as a connection, a transfer of information between the individual and the outside world, as their unification, the goal of establishing the individual in the material world, and finding support for this affirmation.

V. Romenets highlights the following points of action:

Situation (a set of world events that is determined, illuminated by a person and at the same time not determined by it, because it exists outside of it as an unknown, undeveloped material world);

Motivation (directed tension of coexistence of personal and material worlds, which is determined by the situation and manifests itself on the train towards communication with the material world);

An act of action and its aftereffects (the real mutual transition of the first two moments and, as a result of the act, an event).

A person as a certain socio-psychological type may have several behavioral stereotypes. At the same time, the social group of which the individual is a member also produces variants of socio-psychological lines of behavior that depend on the members of the group and its regulatory requirements.

Normative regulation of behavior is aimed at prescribing, in the appropriate situation, a certain type of behavior, a method of achieving a goal, realizing intentions, etc., as well as assessing behavior in accordance with these norms.

Accordingly, the form and nature of the relationship are “set.” As for norms, they have sociocultural and ethnopsychological overtones, i.e. are determined by society, its political and economic practice (social norms determine the standard - a measure, a sample with which a person correlates his actions, on the basis of which he justifies his actions, evaluates the behavior of others), and are based on the cultural, historical and national psychological traditions of specific groups people.

The culture of an individual person is based on his ability to focus not on external, but on internal norms, which, in turn, are developed by the individual in the process of assimilating social and cultural norms given from the outside.

A person enters a group in different ways and the entry of the individual is socialized in it. This depends on many factors of an objective and subjective nature: the composition of the group, its orientation, the time the individual spent in it, the individual characteristics of the community members, etc.

In a generalized form, A. Petrovsky identified and formulated the main phases that indicate the process of an individual’s entry into a relatively stable social environment and development and formation in it.

During the first phase (adaptation), the individual, before showing his individuality, actively assimilates the norms and values ​​that operate in the community. An individual, as a member of a group, has an objective need to “be like everyone else,” which is achieved through a certain similarity to other members of the group. If an individual fails to overcome the difficulties of the adaptation period (disadaptation), he may develop qualities of conformity, uncertainty and dependence.

During the second phase (individualization), a person tries to express himself as an individual as much as possible, in connection with which there is an active search for means and methods to determine his individuality and fix it. Consequently, this phase is generated by contradictions that intensify between the need to “be like everyone else” and the individual’s attempt at maximum personalization. If at the stage of individualization a person does not meet support and mutual understanding (deindividuation), then this causes aggression, negativism, etc.

The third phase - integration (from the Latin Integratio - restoration, unification) - involves the formation in the individual of those new personality formations that meet the needs and needs of group development and the person’s own need to make a certain contribution to the life of the community.

Thus, on the one hand, this phase is a deterministic contradiction between the individual’s attempts to be ideally represented by his characteristics in the group, and on the other hand, the need of the community to accept, approve and cultivate only those of his individual properties that contribute to his development, and therefore himself as individuals.

If the contradiction is not eliminated, a phase of disintegration begins, and, as a consequence, either the individual is isolated from the group or degrades, or the community displaces the individual from its group.

In social psychology, it has been studied that when a person experiences the influence of a sufficiently large social community, in his psychology and behavior what is common to this group is manifested to a greater extent than what represents his own individuality.

The consequence of this is deindividuation - a person’s loss of self-awareness, fear of evaluation.

Among the reasons that lead to a person ceasing to be a person are the following:

Anonymity of the individual in the group;

High level of emotional excitability;

A person’s focus is not on his own behavior, but on what is happening around him;

High cohesion of the group in which the individual finds himself, its unity;

Decreased level of self-awareness and self-control of a person.

Deindividuation manifests itself in impulsive behavior, increasing sensitivity to external influences, increased reactivity, inability to control one’s own behavior, decreased interest in environmental assessments, inability to thoughtfully evaluate and rationally plan behavior.

Regarding the problem of integrating an individual into a group, it should be noted that an individual can be simultaneously involved in various social communities and social institutions. However, the degree of integration into each social group is different.

As already noted, integration presupposes the formation of a conflict-free relationship between the individual and the group. The person integrates social relationships and interpersonal relationships, developed in the course of its interaction, a system of values ​​and norms, a stable system of connections between individuals.

Assimilated values, norms and connections are manifested in the behavior of the individual. The above allows us to identify the following levels of integration of a person:

Integration of the individual into social relations, mediated by the type of activity;

Functional integration (social connections at the status-role and gender-role level);

Normative integration (a person’s assimilation of moral, normative and other regulators);

Interpersonal integration (personal relationships).

Taking this opportunity, we note that the process of integration of a person in a group is influenced by a number of difficulties associated with social, socio-psychological and psychological factors:

Inequality of an individual’s social starting opportunities (education, cultural development, vocational training etc.);

Communicative unpreparedness (communicative incompetence, inability to decide controversial issues, overcome psychological and socio-psychological barriers, etc.);

Individual properties (passivity, laziness, loss of the individual’s sense of social reality, high or low self-esteem, deindividuation, etc.).

Generally general structure an integrated personality can be represented by the unity of the following components: status-role realization of the personality, gender-role differentiation of the individual, individual personality properties (value-semantic sphere, need for social contacts, etc.), lifestyle and life control of the individual (life strategy , meaning of life, life plans, goals, ideals, etc.).

From the point of view of the behavioral direction in psychologists (V. Romenets, V. Tatenko, etc.), the entry of an individual into a social group can be considered from the position of a person’s behavioral activity.

The essence of the contradiction between the external and internal of an action lies in the possible discrepancy between what a person wanted to do and how he actually acted, how he explains his action and how others understand him.

Another problem is the awareness of behavioral activity between its “author” and “performer”: the level of awareness of the situation and motive, action and aftereffect may not be the same for different people, or even for one person.

At the stage of the origin of an action and in the process of its implementation, the conscious, subconscious, unconscious and superconscious actively interact - sometimes synchronously, and sometimes contrary to each other. And this contradiction sets the limits of a person’s remuneration and responsibility for what he has done.

This act is also characterized by a contradiction between rational and emotional. The solution to the contradiction between a person’s desire for universal expression and the possibility of manifesting it in a specific, individualized form finds a way out in the permanence of behavioral activity, through the transition from one act to another in relation to the individual as a person, as a goal, and not as a means. It is also assumed that the other is always no less valuable than yourself. So, when doing something, a person should not expect anything in return.

To recognize this or that action as an act, external assessment is not enough. It is necessary that the “author” of this action wants to act, and not “fulfill an order” from the outside, so that he is aware of and experiences it precisely as an action. Since an act presupposes reciprocity and complicity, the roles of the participants in the act are distributed differently.

Firstly, who can be the initiator of an action and who can be its executor, secondly, the parallelism of behavioral actions (actual co-authorship); thirdly, a unidirectional act: subject A performs an action, and subject B does not respond.

At the same time, of particular value are such methods of interaction that are based on mutual behavioral activity, when one can observe a kind of behavioral dialogue, the participants of which act in relation to each other on the basis of a feeling of spontaneous reciprocity.

Thanks to behavioral activity, a person more or less purposefully contributes to the development of other people, that is, he performs an action for the sake of development and improvement. A person’s behavioral potential is distributed differently in the psychosocial space of functions and roles that a person plays, depending on the subjective significance of each of them in a particular situation.

One of the types of behavioral activity is associated with the development of a person as a biopsychosocial being. It's about about the transition from the biological level of moralization to the mental, and from it to the social as a unique act of self-development.

In a situation of transition from the psychophysical state of sleep to the state of wakefulness, we can talk about a group of criteria by which actions differ: subjectivity - objectivity, activity - passivity, consciousness - unconsciousness, etc.

An action receives the meaning of an act when a person overcomes himself, submitting to his own or social demands; the more difficult it is to do this, the higher the level of the act. We can talk about expected actions, the commission of which is approved by members of a certain community, and about actions that reveal a person’s contradictions with the norms and values ​​of the group.

As for the latter, there is a possible typology of actions that are aimed at destroying the existing and creating a new one or provide for certain options depending on the need, goal, etc.

By nature, such actions are divided into evolutionary, reformative and revolutionary, those that involve “companions”, and those that are carried out individually. Depending on the motivation, actions are distinguished that are carried out according to the “here and now”, “there and then” model. Actions also differ in terms of effectiveness: the greater the risk and the greater the dedication, the more significant the effect of the action, the stronger and deeper the aftereffect of the action.

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Social setting

Plan

1. The concept of social attitude. The importance of attitude research in school D.N. Uznadze

2. Approaches to the study of social attitudes in other schools of Russian psychology (categories of attitude, personality orientation, personal meaning)

3. Tradition of research into social attitudes in Western psychology

4. Definition of social attitude, its structure

5. Functions of social attitudes in the regulation of individual behavior

6. Correlation between social attitudes and real behavior

7. Changes in social attitudes

8. Yadov’s hierarchical theory of attitudes

Literature

1. Andreeva G.M. Social psychology. M., 2000.

2. Andreeva G.M., Bogomolova N.N. Petrovskaya L.A. Foreign social psychology of the 20th century. M., 2001.

3. Belinskaya E.P., Tikhomandritskaya O.A. Social psychology of personality. M, 2001.

4. Bogomolova I.N. Modern cognitive models of persuasive communication//World of Psychology. 1999. No. 3. P. 46-52.

5. Zimbardo F., Leippe M. Social influence. M, 2000.

7. Self-regulation and prediction of social behavior of the individual / Ed. V.A. Yadova. M., 1979

8. Tikhomandritskaya O.A. Social change and changing social attitudes. /Social psychology in the modern world. Ed. G.M.Andreeva, A.I.Dontsova. M, 2002.

9. Festinger L. Theory of cognitive dissonance. St. Petersburg, 1999.

10. Shikhirev D.Zh. Modern social psychology in the USA M., 10979.

11. Yadov V.A. On the dispositional regulation of an individual’s social behavior // Methodological problems of social psychology. M., 1975

1. The concept of social attitude. The importance of attitude research in school D.N.Uznadze

Social attitudes are one of the mechanisms for regulating human behavior. They help us understand why people act in certain ways in certain situations. A person’s social attitudes determine his existence in the macrosystem “in society, in a certain culture and at the micro level - in a specific social group, at the level of interpersonal interaction. Moreover, on the one hand, the attitudes themselves are formed under the influence of society, on the other hand, they influence society, determining people’s attitude towards it.

In everyday practice, the concept of social attitude is used in a meaning close to the concept of attitude (for example: He won’t go to the match - he has a prejudice against large gatherings of people. She likes brunettes. N - blond, he’s not her type).

Social attitudes in social psychology denote the subjective orientations of individuals as members of groups (or society) towards certain values ​​that prescribe for individuals certain socially accepted ways of behavior.

If the concept of social attitude is developed in social psychology, then in general psychology there are long-standing traditions of attitude research. In general psychology, attitude was the subject special research in the works of the outstanding Soviet psychologist D. N. Uznadze and his school (A. S. Prangishvili, I. T. Bzhalava, V. G. Norakidze, etc.), who developed a general psychological theory of attitude.

D. N. Uznadze introduced the idea of ​​an attitude as a “holistic modification of the subject.” An attitude is a holistic dynamic state of a subject, a state of readiness for a certain selective activity. An attitude arises when two factors “meet” - a need and the corresponding objective situation of need satisfaction, which determines the direction of any manifestations of the psyche and behavior of the subject. A fixed attitude occurs when a given combination (need and situation) is repeated. The installation in the context of the theory of D.N. Uznadze concerns the implementation of the simplest physiological needs person. In this theory, attitude is interpreted as a form of manifestation of the unconscious.

2. Approaches to the study of social attitudes in other schools of Russian psychology (categories of attitude, personality orientation, personal meaning)

The idea of ​​identifying special states that precede its actual behavior is present in many studies.

In theory L.I. Bozhovich, when analyzing the processes of personality formation, uses the concept of direction, which can also be interpreted as a kind of predisposition to act in a certain way in relation to spheres of life.

In theory A.N. Leontiev’s concept of “personal meaning” is close to the social attitude, which is considered as the relationship between the motive and purpose of the proposed activity.

If impulsive behavior encounters certain obstacles, it is interrupted, an objectification mechanism specific only to human consciousness begins to function, thanks to which a person separates himself from reality and begins to treat the world as existing objectively and independently of him. Attitudes regulate a wide range of conscious and unconscious forms mental activity person.

3. Tradition of social attitudes research- attitudes in Western psychology

The study of social attitudes was begun in 1918 by sociologists W. Thomas and F. Znanecki when they considered the problem of adaptation of Polish peasants who emigrated to America. In their work “The Polish Peasant in Europe and America” they defined a social attitude as “an individual’s state of consciousness regarding some social value”, the experience of the meaning of this value. Their main interest was concentrated on how the social environment and culture as a whole can determine the attitude of people towards certain social objects that are significant to them. (W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki developed a typology of personalities in accordance with the nature of their adaptation to the social environment: 1) bourgeois type (characterized by stable, traditional attitudes); 2) bohemian type (unstable and incoherent attitudes, but high degree adaptability); 3) a creative type, capable of inventions and innovations due to the flexibility and creativity of their attitudes. It is “creative” individuals, according to these authors, who contribute to the development of social life and culture). The very nature of the social system is determined by the nature of the social actions of individuals, which are based on values ​​and attitudes.

W. Thomas and F. Znaniecki showed that changes in living conditions for the most part led to a change in ideas about the significance of social objects and their assessment by people, i.e. to a change in social attitudes. In cases where the definition of the situation by individuals did not coincide with group (social) values, conflicts could arise and develop, leading in turn to maladaptation of people, and ultimately to social disintegration. Four basic human desires (needs) were cited as reasons for changing social attitudes: new experience, security, recognition and dominance.

It was assumed that the attitude satisfied these human desires through a change in attitude towards values ​​(certain social objects) in compliance with the norms accepted in a given society.

Thus, initially “the study of social attitudes followed the path of considering the problem of adaptation, which subsequently found expression in a number of functional theories of attitude. Among the most famous works that define the functions of social attitudes are the theory of M. Smith, D. Bruner, R. White (Smith, Bruner, White, 1956), as well as the theory of D. Katz.

4. Definition of social attitude, its structure

The concept of attitude and related issues were actively developed in social psychology of the twentieth century. Smith defined a social attitude as “the disposition of an individual according to which the tendencies of his thoughts, feelings and possible actions organized taking into account the social object" [,1968]. . In his approach, Smith conceptualized the social attitude as:

a. cognitive component (awareness),

b. affective component (assessment)

c. conative or behavioral component (behavior in relation to a social object).

Currently, due to the special interest in the study of attitude systems, the structure of a social attitude is defined more broadly. Attitude acts as “a value disposition, a stable predisposition to a certain assessment, based on cognitions, affective reactions, established behavioral intentions (intentions) and previous behavior, which can in turn influence cognitive ones. processes, on affective reactions, on the formation of intentions and on future behavior" [cit. By: Zimbardo, Leippe. M., 2000. P. 46]. Thus, the behavioral component of a social attitude no longer appears only as direct behavior (some real, already completed actions), but also as intentions (intentions). Behavioral intentions can include various expectations, aspirations, plans, plans of action - everything that a person intends to do.

As for the cognitive component, it may include beliefs, ideas, opinions, all cognitions formed as a result of cognition of a social object. Affective reactions represent various emotions, feelings and experiences associated with the attitude object. The attitude itself acts as a total assessment (evaluative reaction), which includes all of the listed components. An example of the installation system is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig.1. Installation system (Zimbardo, Leippe. M., 2000)

5. Installation functions

The concept of installation defines one of the most important psychological mechanisms inclusion of the individual in social system; attitude functions simultaneously as an element psychological structure personality, and as an element of social structure. By different authors four key functions are identified (which have some similarities with the attitude functions in the theory of Smith, Bruner and White).

1.Instrumental(adaptive, utilitarian) function: expresses adaptive tendencies of human behavior, helps to increase rewards and reduce losses. Attitude directs the subject to those objects that serve to achieve his goals. In addition, social attitude helps a person evaluate how other people feel about a social object. Supporting certain social attitudes enables a person to gain approval and be accepted by others, since they are more likely to be attracted to someone who has attitudes similar to their own. Thus, an attitude can contribute to a person’s identification with a group (allows him to interact with people, accepting their attitudes) or leads him to oppose himself to the group (in case of disagreement with the social attitudes of other group members).

Self-protective function: social attitude helps resolve internal conflicts of the individual, protects people from unpleasant information about themselves or about social objects that are significant to them. People often act and think in ways to protect themselves from unpleasant information. For example, in order to increase his own importance or the importance of his group, a person often resorts to forming a negative attitude towards members of the outgroup.

Function of expressing values(self-realization function): attitudes give a person the opportunity to express what is important to him and organize his behavior accordingly. By carrying out certain actions in accordance with his attitudes, the individual realizes himself in relation to social objects. This function helps a person to define himself and understand what he is.

4. Knowledge organization function: based on a person’s desire to meaningfully organize the world around him. With the help of attitude, it is possible to evaluate information coming from the outside world and correlate it with a person’s existing motives, goals, values ​​and interests. The installation simplifies the task of learning new information. By performing this function, attitude is included in the process of social cognition.

So, social attitudes set the direction for people’s thoughts and actions in relation to a specific object or situation, they help a person establish and maintain social identity, organize a person’s ideas about the world around him, and allow him to realize himself. Attitudes are actively involved both in the process of regulation of social behavior and in the process of social cognition. In general, we can say that attitude, performing all of the listed functions, adapts a person to the surrounding social environment and protects him from negative influences or uncertainty.

6. Correlation between social attitudes and real behavior

For the first time, the discrepancy between the attitude and the actual behavior of a person was established in the experiments of R. Lapierre in 1934. He traveled with two Chinese students around the United States, checking into many hotels and everywhere meeting a normal reception.

However, when, after the trip, he again turned to the hotel owners with a written request to accept him with Chinese students, in 52% of cases he was refused (which indicated the existence of negative attitudes, which, however, did not manifest themselves in real behavior.

The problem of discrepancy between social attitudes and real behavior is one of the central problems in attitude research.

7. Changes in social attitudes

Social changes cannot but affect the internal regulators of behavior, “tuning” them to the transformations of the social environment that have occurred. Of course, this restructuring does not happen immediately.

The study of changes in attitudes in social psychology is associated with the so-called theories of cognitive correspondence, created in the 50s of the XX century by F. Heider, T. Nyokom, L. Festinger, C. Osgood and P. Tannenbaum [see: Andreeva, Bogomolova, Petrovskaya , 2001]. Their main idea is a person’s desire for psychological consistency of his cognitions (beliefs, opinions, ideas about his own behavior). If, for example, a person’s beliefs conflict, he begins to experience tension and discomfort. To relieve this unpleasant state, a person tries to establish consistent and relaxed relationships between cognitions by changing some of them. Thus, a change in attitude will occur precisely when a person’s cognitions in a situation of social influence come into conflict with each other. By changing “old” attitudes, it is possible to accept new information, which in turn will contribute to the formation of attitudes consistent with it.

There is also, in our opinion, an important circumstance in which the adaptive orientation of the social attitude is also manifested. Thus, a situation of social change brings with it the need to constantly make new choices, be it, for example, a new place of work, leisure time, or even a brand of goods. As you know, any choice is always accompanied by tension and even stress if it is extremely significant for a person. Social attitudes play an important role in relieving the resulting tension. This fact has also been studied in detail within the framework of correspondence theories, namely the theory of cognitive dissonance by L. Festinger.

Cognitive dissonance in this case occurs because the chosen alternative is rarely entirely positive, and the rejected alternative is rarely entirely negative. Dissonant cognitions are ideas about negative aspects the chosen alternative and the positive aspects of the rejected one. Moreover, after the choice has been made, a “regret phase” begins, during which the chosen alternative is devalued, and the rejected one seems more attractive. True, this one; The phase usually does not last long. This is followed by a dissonance-reducing reevaluation of the decision, i.e. acceptance of the original decision as correct. What does a person do in this case? People begin to confirm the success of their choice in every possible way, for example, they look for information that emphasizes the correctness of their decision, ignoring negative information. These actions can, accordingly, reduce the attractiveness of the rejected object and (or) increase the attractiveness of the chosen one, i.e. change attitudes [Festinger, 1999].

2. Change in social attitudes can occur as a result of persuasive communication through changes in cognitions. For example, in the course of persuasive communication (through mass media), a person’s attitudes towards current events or historical facts, attitudes towards famous political figures, etc. can be changed.

One of the most famous areas of empirical research on attitude change is research into persuasive communication conducted in the 50s at Yale University (USA) and associated with the names of K. Hovland and his colleagues I. Janis, G. Kelly, M. Sherif and others. Designing their experiments within the framework of the well-known concept of the communication process, these researchers demonstrated the influence on attitudes of numerous characteristics of the source of information (the communicator), the content of the message and the characteristics of the audience [see: Bogomolova, 1991; Gulevich, 1999]. At the same time, the persuasive message was interpreted as a stimulus, and the change in social attitudes occurring under its influence was interpreted as an acquired reaction.

It was shown that between communicative stimuli and changeable social attitudes there are “implicit constructs” that play the role of mediators in the process of persuasive communication. These may include: firstly, the beliefs of the recipients themselves, secondly, the predisposition of recipients to accept persuasive influence and, finally, factors that mediate psychological processes (attention, understanding, acceptance).

The problem of changing attitude is also considered in modern cognitive models of persuasive communication. The most famous of them are the Probabilistic Model of Information Processing by R. Petty and J. Cacioppo and the Heuristic-Systematic Model by S. Chaiken. Let us only note that both models consider various ways a person’s processing of incoming information, and the way in which the information is processed will determine the stability and “strength” of changes in his attitudes.

So, a change in social attitudes can occur as a result of persuasive communication through changes in cognitions. For example, in the course of persuasive communication (through mass media), a person’s attitudes towards current events or historical facts, attitudes towards famous political figures, etc. can be changed.

3. Changes in attitudes are also explained by the “Foot in the Door” phenomenon, when a change in attitudes is a consequence of a series of minor concessions, as well as phenomena. Described by Cialdini in his work “Psychology of Influence”.

8. Hierarchical structure of personality dispositions

One of the most well-known models of regulation of social behavior is the theory hierarchical structure personality dispositions by V. A Yadov [Yadov, 1975]. In this concept, personality dispositions represent predispositions recorded in social experience to perceive and evaluate the conditions of activity, the individual’s own activity and the actions of others, as well as the predisposition to behave appropriately in certain conditions [Self-regulation and forecasting of social behavior of the individual, 1979]. The proposed hierarchy of dispositional formations acts as a regulatory system in relation to the behavior of the individual, i.e. The main function of the dispositional system is the mental regulation of social activity or behavior of the subject in the social environment. If we structure activities in relation to immediate or more distant goals, we can distinguish several hierarchical levels of behavior. Moreover, each of the levels of dispositions is “responsible” for regulating a certain level of behavior.

First level-- elementary fixed attitudes -- responsible for the regulation of behavioral acts -- the subject's immediate reactions to the current objective situation. The expediency of behavioral acts is dictated by the need to establish an adequate correspondence (equilibrium) between specific and rapidly changing influences external environment and the vital needs of the subject” at a given moment in time.

Second level-- social attitudes (attitudes) regulate the actions of the individual. An act is an elementary socially significant “unit” of behavior. The expediency of carrying out an action is expressed in establishing a correspondence between the simplest social situation and social needs subject.

Third level- basic social attitudes - already regulates some systems of actions that make up behavior in various spheres of life, where a person pursues significantly more distant goals, the achievement of which is ensured by a system of actions.

Fourth level- value orientations - regulates the integrity of behavior, or the actual activity of the individual. “Goal setting” at this highest level is a kind of “life plan”, the most important element of which are individual life goals related “to the main social spheres of human activity in the field of work, knowledge, family and social life. [Yadov, 1975. P. 97].

Thus, at all levels, a person’s behavior is regulated by his dispositional system. Moreover, in each specific situation and depending on the goal, the leading role belongs to a certain dispositional formation. At this time, the remaining dispositions represent “background levels” (in the terminology of N.A. Bernstein). Thus, lower dispositional levels are activated and restructured to ensure the implementation of behavior regulated by a higher dispositional level that is adequate to the situation. And higher dispositional levels are activated to coordinate a behavioral act or action within the framework of purposeful behavior in a given field of activity. In general, at the moment immediately preceding a behavioral act, deed or the beginning of an activity, in accordance with the level of activity, the entire dispositional system comes to a state of actual readiness, i.e. forms an actual disposition. However, as already mentioned, the leading role here will be played by precisely those levels of the dispositional hierarchy that correspond to certain needs and situations.

Dispositional regulation of social activity can be described by the following formula:

“situations” (= conditions of activity) - “dispositions” - “behavior” (= activity) [Yadov, 1975. P. 99].

In conditions of radical social changes, one of the first to undergo changes is, apparently, lower-level dispositions - social settings (attitudes) as means of ensuring human behavior in specific situations of his interaction with the social environment. This becomes possible due to their greater mobility and ability to change during social influence compared to higher-level dispositions, such as value orientations. Attitudes adapt a person to the changing demands placed on him by society. Therefore, during social crises, when generally accepted norms and values ​​are destroyed or changed, it is attitudes that are activated as less global, but no less significant regulators of social behavior. In this regard, such an important problem of social psychology as the problem of social attitudes, their role in the adaptation of the individual to new living conditions becomes especially relevant in the situation of social changes that have occurred.

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